Joanna Cripps has been a blue badge holder for most of her life and she has recently started a campaign to introduce more disabled spaces into the heart of Aylesbury.

A resident of the area for 15 years, she feels the number of car parking spaces for people like herself has been decreasing, and the spaces already allocated in multi-storey car parks are not near enough to the shops for people with limited mobility.

"A few months ago they had taken away the facilities on the right hand side of the high street, near Iceland. There is a lack of places in the town centre - there used to be a few spaces outside First Choice holidays, Marks and Spencer and near the Lloyds bank but they have taken all those away now. Blue badge holders used to be able to park on double yellow lines in the town centre but now this is not allowed."

A few weeks ago, Mrs Cripps received an unwelcome present on her car windscreen in Kingsbury in the shape of a parking ticket.

The £60 fine was issued to Mrs Cripps after she parked her vehicle in a loading bay. A traffic warden had previously told her that she could park there as long as she displayed her disabled badge.

She said: "I am having to become more and more housebound because parking has become so difficult. It has now become almost impossible to visit the town and park with a blue badge. We have as much right to visit the town as the able bodied do and I for one am fed up with driving around and around it getting more and more frustrated looking for a suitable parking space. Aylesbury Vale District Council has taken what little parking there was for us and made it available for taxi ranks and loading bays. There must be more than 30 disabled people living in Aylesbury."

Mrs Cripps has written to Aylesbury MP David Lidington to highlight the issue and get more disabled bays brought back to the town centre. She said that ideally, the former disabled spaces directly outside shops need to be reinstated to cater for shoppers who cannot walk to the shops from the car parks and the spaces provided in them. Mrs Cripps would also like to see the use of double yellow lines for disabled users brought back.

A spokesman for AVDC said: "Some disabled parking bays in the High Street were turned into short stay bays as part of the second phase of the transport hub roadworks co-ordinated by the county council.

"However, the number of disabled parking spaces in the town was not reduced because more bays for blue badge holders were made available in Anchor Lane.

"We believe in equal opportunity and access for all."

Do you agree with Mrs Cripps?

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